Puzzle Pieces
by Rapunzel4
Summary: Just another introspective Duo fic.


(M.E. walks into the room, pausing when she notices a bowl of chocolate on the floor. She is about to reach down and take a piece, when.)  
  
Rapunzel: Don't touch the chocolate.  
  
(Rapunzel is crouched down behind a chair, a flyswatter in her hand and a demented gleam in her eye.)  
  
M.E.: Why not?  
  
Rapunzel: It's muse bate. She loves chocolate; she's sure to come. And then I'll show her! ::brandishes the flyswatter menacingly:: I'll teach her to come crying to me the week of finals!  
  
M.E.: 'Zel-chan, you are seriously disturbed.  
  
Rapunzel: Shh. Be vewy, vewy quite. I'm hunting muses.  
  
Warnings: 2+1, angsty, Duo POV Disclaimers: I do not own Gundam Wing or its characters. Authors Notes: I have got to stop writing these ficlets about things in my everyday life.  
  
Puzzle Pieces By Rapunzel  
  
People who know me will tell you that I'm no fun to be around when I'm sick. I hate being incapacitated and not able to do things, and it makes me cranky and irritable. I get bored way too easily. Well, I guess that's not an accurate statement; I don't get bored, exactly. It's just that when there's nothing else to do, my mind starts to wander, and some of the places it goes aren't very pleasant.  
  
All of that really sucked for me, because I was about as sick as I had ever been. I had mono. And before you ask, no, I don't know how I got it. I know it's called the kissing disease, which for me was a real joke. I don't want to bother to think how long it's been since I've kissed anyone, even just a light peck on the cheek. I think I probably got exposed to it sometime during our last undercover stay at one of the schools near an OZ base. All I knew was that by the time we made it to the next safe house, I was as sick as a dog.  
  
For those of you who have never had mono, let me tell you right off the bat that it sucks. The sore throat and the fever were bad enough, but it was the fatigue that really got me. Suddenly, all I felt like doing anymore was lying in bed. Heero checked my symptoms and did a little research, then came back and told me what I had. He then proceeded to tell me about all the possible complications that could arise, including a ruptured spleen, and various blood disorders. I finally got up the energy to go on the computer myself and check. Turns out most of those problems were pretty rare, something he hadn't bothered to mention. I think he was just trying to scare me into staying in bed. I should have been irritated with him, but instead I felt touched. I'd like to think that it was his concern for my welfare that led him to do that.  
  
Aside from Heero and me, the only other person in the safe house was Quatre, who was a little more sympathetic to my plight. Unfortunately, he was almost as clueless about what to do about it as he was sympathetic. Since chicken soup is supposed to be good for you when you're sick, Quatre immediately set out to make me some.  
  
Let this be a warning to you all. Never let a rich boy who has had servants all his life try to cook; it's just not pretty. I had never been aware that you could burn chicken soup before. Heero finally took pity on me (or on the kitchen, I'm still not sure which) and made the soup for me at Quatre's insistence. Heero may not be a great cook, but at that point I wasn't going to complain.  
  
So there I was, reasonably well fed, but still stuck in bed. There really aren't a lot of things to do in that situation. I would have read, but there weren't a lot of books in the house. What few there were I breezed through in a couple of days. That left me with nothing to occupy my time until Quatre came up with his bright idea.  
  
I awoke one day to find him in my room, clearing off the bedside table. When I finally got up enough energy to ask him what he was doing, he just smiled at me.  
  
"I know you're bored, so I thought I'd get something to keep you occupied," he said.  
  
With that, he reached down and produced a box, which he handed to me. Upon inspecting it, I discovered that it was a thousand piece puzzle. It featured a picture of a snow capped mountain with a lake in front of it.  
  
"That ought to keep you busy for a while," Quatre said.  
  
He was right. That evening I dumped the puzzle out of its box and got to work on it, expecting to be finished with it after a day or two. But I quickly found that I couldn't work on the puzzle for hours at a time. I'd simply get stuck, and then get frustrated, and then have to back off for a while until I was ready to try again. I did the perimeter of the puzzle first, then started in on the lake, figuring I'd work my way up the mountain gradually. I was putting off the sky, since it was all uniform and would be a pain to complete.  
  
Quatre may have been right about the puzzle taking me a while, but it certainly didn't occupy me fully. The thing about puzzles is that they are very different from books. When I read a book, I become totally engrossed in it, and I stop paying attention to the world around me. Puzzles, while you have to look at them, do not require every ounce of concentration you possess. I found that I could easily carry on a conversation with someone while working on the puzzle and never miss a beat.  
  
This proved to be something of a problem. Half the reason I wanted to be distracted was so that I wouldn't have to think, but the puzzle didn't stop me from thinking. If anything, it made me think all the more.  
  
As I sat on the edge of my bed one day, fitting pieces together, my thoughts decided to run away from me. The puzzle was more than half complete; I had started on the mountain, and would soon reach the sky. I sat back and gazed at it, and my mind began to wander.  
  
Humans are like puzzle pieces, I mused. We all fit into the world somewhere, even if we ourselves can't see it. The analogy pleased me, and so I continued to extend it. There are all shapes, colors, and types of people needed to make the world complete, just as there were many shapes, colors, and types of pieces on the table before me.  
  
This vein of thought didn't become particularly displeasing until I began to wonder exactly which piece in the puzzle I would be. Once I began to think along those lines, I had to try and assign each of my comrades a piece. I made Quatre a piece that contained a vibrant and lively splash of yellow leaves. I made Trowa a piece that fit perfectly with Quatre's with the darker green of the trees on it. For Wufei, I picked one of the darker water pieces that sat on its own in the middle of the lake. The whole process amused me until I came to Heero.  
  
He was harder to decide than the rest. I had deliberately put Quatre's piece next to Trowa's and Wufei by himself, but I wasn't sure where Heero fit in all of this. Should I stick him next to the piece I had mentally named Relena? After all, there was some connection between the two; there had to be. She was always following him around, and he. well, he let her. Still, I wanted more than anything to make Heero the piece that fit together with whichever piece I picked for myself.  
  
On a whim, I grabbed two mountain pieces that looked like they might go together. I hadn't placed them yet, so they were still distinctly separate from the rest of the puzzle, but I didn't care. I named one Heero, and one Duo, and I tried to stick them together.  
  
I should have waited to name them until after I made sure they really went together.  
  
They wouldn't fit. They looked like they should have, but they didn't. No matter which angle I tried, they simply refused to go together. I wanted them to fit so badly that I tried multiple times, but nothing worked. My only consolation was that at least Heero's dark mountain piece couldn't possible fit with the snowy white piece I had labeled "Relena".  
  
Maybe people really are like puzzle pieces. If they aren't compatible, they won't go together. Oh, you can try to force them, and they will stay for a short period of time, but it won't last, and the result isn't pretty. And when they do inevitable break apart, one or both of the pieces usually ends up damaged.  
  
My own casual amusement had backfired on me. Instead of confirming what I wanted to be true, the puzzle pieces had refuted it. I didn't want some silly puzzle telling me I didn't belong with Heero. Angrily, I went back to trying to fit the pieces together, but to no avail. In frustration, I raised my arm, and with a sweeping gesture swept the puzzle, a good week's worth of effort on my part, off the table and to the floor. Most of the pieces scattered on impact, and I flung my Heero and Duo pieces after them.  
  
A puzzle hitting the floor does not make a lot of noise, so I'll never know exactly what it was that attracted Heero to the room, but when I looked up a minute later, there he was, standing in the doorway. He looked at me, then at the remnants of the puzzle on the floor, then at me again.  
  
"The pieces wouldn't fit," I said defensively, by way of explanation. The moment the words came out of my mouth, I realized how stupid they sounded.  
  
"Duo," Heero said calmly, "have you even been tested for ADD?"  
  
I glared at him.  
  
He finally relented with a sigh. "Never mind," he said. He knelt down and began to collect the scattered pieces. Some sections of the puzzle had survived undamaged, and he set those carefully back on the table before stooping to retrieve the rest.  
  
"Heero, you don't have to do that," I told him. "I was going to pick it up later."  
  
He just shrugged at me and continued to pick up pieces.  
  
An idea came into my head. "Hey Heero, you wanna help me with the puzzle?"  
  
All I got was another shrug, but I took it as an answer in the affirmative. Gleefully, I began trying to fit pieces together again. Mentally, I was already assigning little "Heero" and "Duo" labels to the pieces I was working with.  
  
Hey, you've got to admit, it sure beats "He-loves-me, he-loves-me-not" with flower petals.  
  
Owari  
  
::looks at the clock:: Oh man, it's 1:30 AM, and I have a final tomorrow. I'll get my muse for this. At least it's not a morning final. 


End file.
